EFF and 23 Civil Liberties Organizations Demand Transparency on NSA Domestic Phone Record Surveillance

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: June 3, 2018 at 17:20:36 EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] EFF and 23 Civil Liberties Organizations Demand Transparency on NSA Domestic Phone Record 
> Surveillance
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> EFF and 23 Civil Liberties Organizations Demand Transparency on NSA Domestic Phone Record Surveillance
> By DAVID RUIZ
> Jun 1 2018
> <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/eff-and-x-civil-liberties-organizations-demand-transparency-nsa-domestic-phone>
>
> This week, 24 civil liberties organizations, including EFF and the ACLU, urged Director of National Intelligence 
> Daniel Coats to report—as required by law—statistics that could help clear up just how many individuals are burdened 
> by broad NSA surveillance of domestic telephone records. These records show who is calling whom and when, but not the 
> content of the calls. 
>
> These numbers are crucial to understanding how the NSA conducts this highly sensitive surveillance under Section 215 
> of the Patriot Act, as amended by the USA Freedom Act of 2015. Under the earlier version of this surveillance 
> program, the NSA collected details of nearly every single Americans’ phone calls. With the NSA’s domestic phone 
> record surveillance powers scheduled to expire in 2019, Congress and the public deserve to know the truth before any 
> legislative attempts to reauthorize the program.
>
> Despite this, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has failed to report these statistics in its 
> past three annual transparency reports.
>
> The civil liberties groups also signed a letter to Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the Chair and 
> Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, warning about the NSA’s continued failure to comply with the law 
> mandating disclosure of this data. 
>
> For more than a decade, the NSA relied on a faulty interpretation of Section 215 to collect the time, duration, and 
> numbers called for nearly every single Americans’ phone calls. But a federal appeals court in New York in 2015 ruled 
> that this collection was illegal, calling it “unprecedented and unwarranted.”
>
> Soon after, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act. While it did not go far enough, the bill included several 
> transparency provisions to prevent future surveillance abuse by the NSA. For example, the bill included the 
> requirement that the NSA annually report the accurate number of “unique identifiers”—things like accounts, persons, 
> or devices—that the NSA uses when conducting surveillance under Section 215. 
>
> As we told Director Coats in our letter:
>
> This data point is critical to measure the number of individuals impacted by the program and the extent to which the 
> [the USA Freedom Act] has successfully prevented bulk collection under this authority. Importantly, the number can 
> also serve as a warning sign in the event the NSA attempts to resurrect unlawful surveillance practices under Section 
> 215.
>
> Concerningly, Section 215 collection has risen dramatically since the bill’s passage. According to the most recent 
> transparency report from the ODNI, the NSA collected more than 530 million call records in 2017, an increase of more 
> than 300 percent from the year prior. However, lacking accurate statistics on “unique identifiers,” these numbers are 
> difficult to interpret.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915
Unsubscribe Now: 
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-a538de84&post_id=20180603175507:C5B08AF8-6778-11E8-BC4E-DAB3508E5F41
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com